Paul Bass Photo
A New Haven agency is considering eventually closing one of its three shelters for homeless women and children as it races to close a $553,000 gap for the coming year.
The agency, New Reach, saw $129,725 of its annual city government funding cut the fiscal year that started in July as part of a Harp administration effort to rethink how it distributes money for helping the homeless. The agency’s director, Kellyann Day (pictured), learned this week that the administration has been unable to find other money to help fill the gap.
The agency now is turning to donors to help fill the broader half-million-plus-dollar gap for the coming year. It has done that for years now, each year seeking more money.
Meanwhile, city homeless agencies had to turn away 36 families seeking emergency shelter this week, because all beds were filled.
New Reach, which has about a $6 million total annual budget, is starting “strategic discussions” about whether it should close one of its three shelters, and perhaps transform it into “supportive housing” for people who need long-term on-site help to avoid returning to the streets, according to Day. New Reach’s shelters are Careways, Martha’s Place, and Life Haven, the latter focused on young moms and pregnant women.
“The trend is going up in terms of fundraising need,” Day said Thursday in an interview at Life Haven, a converted former convent on Ferry Street in Fair Haven where up to 20 moms and their kids stay at a time. “We don’t have a bunch of paid development staff. We don’t have a big endowment.”
New Reach’s rethinking comes at a time when homeless agencies and their funders are rethinking how best to help the homeless. Nationally, the agencies and the government have set a goal of eliminating chronic homelessness by 2020 through more supportive housing and efforts to help people land long-term homes.
In New Haven, agencies have united in a remarkable coalition over the past year, setting up a system (called a Coordination Access Network, or CAN) to work together daily to keep track of everyone seeking shelter to find each one the right assistance. (Click here to read about how the coalition also found homes for 102 people or families in 100 days.)
The Harp administration has begun steering more of its annual $1 million in total homelessness grants to efforts to find people medical and housing-search help, and to track how well that help pans out over the course of a year. It also began having an independent panel review agencies’ grant requests this year on a numerical basis, using those scores to determine who gets how much money.
New Reach got a low score in that process. It saw its annual city allotment drop from $329,725 to $200,000 as a result.
Mayor Toni Harp and her social services chief, Martha Okafor, told New Reach they would try to find other government money to help fill the gap. Okafor informed Day at a meeting Wednesday that no other money was found.
Harp Thursday called that fact “unfortunate. We tried to find some extra money in the budget.” Originally New Reach was to receive $100,000, not $200,000, Harp said; the other $100,000 was already “found money.”
“We recognize they do good work,” Harp said. “We couldn’t find anymore.”
Day recommended to Okafor that the city allow New Reach to use the whole $200,000 allotment for just one of its three agencies, to simply reporting and accounting requirements. Okafor said she didn’t immediately agree to the request because the city had expectations of that $200,000 going to all three agencies, meeting different community needs.
For the short term, Day is hoping the state housing department will come through with a pending two-year $260,000 grant to help New Reach get through the short term while figuring out the future.
In the meantime, 36 families seeking emergency shelter through the new CAN were turned away this week because all beds in town were filled, according to Day. (Six adult single men and six women were also turned away.)
Jessica is the mom of one of those families.
Jessica (who declined to give her last night or be photographed) has an 8‑year-old and 11-year-old daughter. She’s 26 and grew up in New Haven. She and her daughters lost their apartment when the landlord sold the building and the new owner evicted everyone in order to remodel, she said. She and the kids lived with her mom for a while, then her aunt. Last week her aunt asked them to leave. “She didn’t want the kids there,” Jessica said.
Earning minimum wage working with the elderly, Jessica hasn’t had money for a down payment, or security deposit on an apartment. Because New Haven shelters are out of available beds, she and the kids have been staying at the Three Judges Motel on the west side of town. Jessica Thursday was at Life Haven, where workers were hoping to connect her to a program that offers money for down payments and security deposits. Maybe, before a bed opens up, she’ll have a place to call home.